Person of the year

[olstyn]

I assert that any and all self-reliant, responsible, productive, decent human beings owe it to the world to at least replace themselves in the population. If you've got other reasons not to have kids, it is what it is.
If your career or lifestyle or life goals etc preclude children, or you simply don't want the burden of raising a responsible kid, that's fine too -
but if you just want to have fun and die, be honest about it, instead of blathering on some smug bullshit about overpopulation.

The problem isn't the number of people, the fucking problem (literally, I suppose) is that the people who contribute the most are reproducing the least. Though some of the finest examples of humanity I've had the honor of meeting were foster kids or adopted, so it's not even a 'fucking' problem.

The children you raise are your legacy to the world and if you think your values, beliefs, morals, etc are worth preserving - what are you doing to instill those values in youth? Nothing? Then you might as well let the booger-eating crotchfruit idiocracy win.

I do have other reasons as well, including but not limited to the simple understanding that no matter how much my parents think differently, I would not be a good father. That said, it's no joke that any given person not having kids produces a larger "carbon credit" than basically any other choice they can make. I also think that your apparent view that intelligent people owe the human race children is a bit ridiculous. Children are in vast oversupply and many of them don't have loving homes - if people want children, there are plenty of them waiting to be adopted, and with intelligent, caring parents raising them, those children can become good, productive members of society.

To your last point, though, the booger-eating crotchfruit idiocracy has basically overwhelmed the rest of us. I'm not convinced that they haven't already won.

[JRB]

I do have other reasons as well, including but not limited to the simple understanding that no matter how much my parents think differently, I would not be a good father. That said, it's no joke that any given person not having kids produces a larger "carbon credit" than basically any other choice they can make. I also think that your apparent view that intelligent people owe the human race children is a bit ridiculous. Children are in vast oversupply and many of them don't have loving homes - if people want children, there are plenty of them waiting to be adopted, and with intelligent, caring parents raising them, those children can become good, productive members of society.

To your last point, though, the booger-eating crotchfruit idiocracy has basically overwhelmed the rest of us. I'm not convinced that they haven't already won.

What I've seen in the past ~20 years its been since I was a teenager, is that fathers that worry about how good of a Dad they'd be tend to do just fine as Dads. Fathers that didn't want kids and have zero interest, and fathers that just suck at being a productive human being tend to be the ones that suck as Dads. But your reasons are your own and I've no place to criticize those other reasons.
Whatever your reasons for not having kids; they're just fine and need no assistance from 'carbon credit'.

Please re-read my post and show me exactly where I insisted one had to *biologically* replace themselves. I specifically mentioned adoption and fostering. Yes, children are in oversupply. What's in short supply are good parents raising good kids, whether biologically theirs or not.
But skipping kids in your own life for carbon-impact reasons is just fucking stupid. Do you support our whole way of life disappearing? No?
Then why allow Darwin's race to be won by parents that can't be bothered with a condom when they're drunk vs. responsible, productive people who give a shit? And if you think the crotchfruit idiocracy have already won, then why give a flying fuck about the 'carbon credit' or any of that other bullshit?

Finally, it's not what we owe the human race as a species, because as others have said on this forum, it'd be damn hard to kill all of humanity at this point.

But if you believe that the US of A deserves to be preserved and is heretofore the best that humanity have collectively done, we should do what we can to preserve that for the next generation.
That starts by actually *having* a next generation, raised by productive, intelligent, successful adults that can cohesively and peacefully exist and get the most from our society and system of government.

Otherwise, you're giving that all up to be won and lost by the results of careless reproduction and public school day care. Which is already on a fast track toward NOT preserving our values, our way of life, the Constitution, or any of that stuff worth saving.
Compared to the 2A and relentless attacks on other human rights, which is an established, undeniable situation that is a very real threat to our values and way of life - you've spared America children (and thereby voting adults) that could love and value those rights as well, and be decent, carbon-conscious human beings if that's something you worry about.

So pardon me if I find 'carbon credit' to be a pretty shallow, short-sighted, and misplaced reason to not have kids.
If anything, I personally believe that to be nothing more than a PC excuse to shield oneself from accusations of selfishness on your decision to not have kids. When it's otherwise nobody's fucking business.


Meanwhile, a shitload of people on this side of the world tend to have several wives and pump out 10+ kids each and they're perpetuating and fighting to preserve a wildly different set of values than our own.
Of those, a significant number of them see absolutely nothing wrong with routinely sexually assaulting kids or animals, or keeping women as chattel or second-class humans, or of course strapping bombs to themselves and kids and young women to kill people that disagree with them.

Maybe you could talk to them about the carbon credit impact of all the kids they're having. I'm *sure* they'll listen.

[rob_s]

Seen elsewhere, someone said it makes perfect sense - a petulant child railing against things they don't fully understand and can't control and the impotent adults that agree with their baseless emotional opinion riding on the backs of children due to their own weakness That's 2019 in a nutshell.

FIFY

[rob_s]

So pardon me if I find 'carbon credit' to be a pretty shallow, short-sighted, and misplaced reason to not have kids.

"I refuse to bring children into this world because [insert socio-political bullshit]" is one of the worst virtue signaling statements I've ever heard.

[Cypher]

I'm not holding my breath, or even thinking about holding my breath.

IDK it might lower emissions

[GardoneVT]

Before you panic, or start thinking that there is some urgent need to kill off large swaths of the human population (and there's a lot of that going on up thread), stop and seriously ask yourself if this is truly a danger?

What do you really know about the topic, and who did you learn it from?

Are your sources about the issue trustworthy when it comes to other issues? (don't forget about Gell-Mann Amnesia or Cargo Cult Science).

Is there the possibility of bias in what you read, especially by people who have something to gain? (Money, fame, power)
Are the results being 'massaged' by the people above?

Are dissenting opinions being allowed, or are they shouted down and suppressed?
Is there evidence of faulty methodology? Failed predictions? General bad science?

My goal isn’t to insult your point, but I’m of the thought those questions are irrelevant. Assume for a moment there’s credible data which shows the climate is changing. The next logical topic- can we do something about it? - dies a quick death on the field of pragmatism. Unless we can find a way to reduce our “carbon footprint” profitably , it’s not gonna happen.

Done. Close the book and go home. Russia and Chinas leadership don’t give a molecular damn about climate change, which practically speaking means ours can’t either. I don’t agree with Trumps leadership, but one thing he did right is pull out of the intellectual farce that’s the Paris accords.

As fixing climate change isn’t profitable the question of “credible or not” is irrelevant. We are not changing the global economic system to “fix” climate change regardless of what science or a privileged Swedish teen sways.

[CWM11B]

On the topic of overpopulation, this guy has a pretty interesting take on it. He's fairly liberal, and I disagree with him on several points, but he concludes overpopulation is not a problem. This was a very interesting read for me.

https://www.amazon.com/Lifespan-Why-.../dp/1501191977

[DC_P]

Until we stop having so many unnecessary children, we'll inevitably be headed down this path. As a species, we breed at far beyond replacement rate, and our average lifespan is only increasing. We're screwing ourselves over as a species. I'm doing my part - my wife and I have no kids and no plans to have any. How many of you can say the same?

Me.

My reasons for not having kids has nothing to do with the world they would be brought into or any sort of 'doing my part', but I agree - it is not how much pollution the things we have/use generate, it is how many people there are using those things.

[Borderland]

This^^^^^ pretty much sums up how I feel about it. I think this is far closer to the truth than whatever climate horseshit is being peddled this week. Back in the 70’s the climate horseshitters were claiming that a new ice age was coming...what happened to that? I’m supposed to believe that in the space of about 50years we went from a new ice age coming, to the planet overheating?

They can see and measure things from space now. There always has been climate change, even some catastrophic events like sea levels rising or lowering dramatically in a short time, stuff like that. In the 70's there were only 4B people on the planet. Now there are 7B. In another 15 years there will be 8B and in a hundred years 15B. I think climate change will happen no matter what we do. It's happened even when nobody was around. But now that we are here and we can measure it, that disturbs us. People being people want to blame it on somebody like China or India or something like the industrial revolution. Climate change is nothing more than your normal catastrophic event in the evolution of the earth. What caused it the last time, who knows, who cares? This time it's going to be over population but things will get back to normal in a hundred years or so. I'm not sure why everyone is making such a big deal out of climate change.

Nothing has changed except it's going to change again.

[LittleLebowski]